The lady clerk at Hometown Market totally agreed with me. It wasn’t supposed to snow on Monday.
The weather reports had been very specific, for the past week. That it would snow on Sunday, and then be sunny and clear on Monday.
Then, we get dumped on. It just wasn’t right, to treat us like that. We totally agreed.
“But what do you expect,” the clerk explained. “They’ve got that government shutdown going on.”
Of course. That explains it. On Monday, there was nobody working at federal agency that controls the weather. They were home ‘on furlough.’ And probably in a bad mood, to boot. Bad things happen, when federal employees are in a bad mood.
And all of these problems — like snow, when we’re not supposed to have snow — all these problems are because President Trump wants money for his “Mexican Wall” and Congress doesn’t agree.
So, we have to shovel the damn driveway.
But the lady clerk was thoughtful. I’m often impressed with the ideas that come from grocery store clerks.
“The President’s problem is, he’s not ambitious enough. He needs to think bigger. The wall they’ve been talking about is too… I don’t know, it’s too wimpy.”
Too inexpensive?
“Yeah. Too inexpensive. Too cheap. Look at the Great Wall of China. You can see it from space. People travel from all over the world to visit it. And it was built by a bunch of starving Chinese, without any machinery.
“I’m sure we could make something even more impressive.
“The President needs to sell this thing to Congress as the ‘Great Wall of America.’ Like, you know, a tourist attraction? I can imagine thousands of Chinese visiting every year. Maybe millions.”
The Chinese do have a large population. Or so I’ve heard. But the Great Wall of China is, like, a thousand years old. Will we have to wait for a thousand years to attract the tourists?
“You have to think big,” she told me. “You build stuff into the wall that the Chinese would like. You know, a McDonalds, here and there, so they can try real American food. A roller coaster. A water park. Outdoor movie theaters, all along the way. You have to think big.
“And our President likes to think big.”
So I’m sharing this story online, because maybe President Trump will read it sometime in the next few days, when he’s not tweeting about Syria or Robert Mueller. If he doesn’t, we’re probably going to be up to our necks in snow.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.